


it's a paradise (it's a war zone)

by extasiswings



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Flogan-centric, M/M, Multi, Timeless Fanfic Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 22:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11450766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: For the July Timeless Fanfic Contest. Prompt: How to save the world in 5 simple steps.Step 1: Find your enemyStep 2: Form a grudging partnershipStep 3: Re-evaluate your positionStep 4: Fall in loveStep 5: Kick assBonus Step: Live Happily Ever After





	it's a paradise (it's a war zone)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [sharp as a knife (you fit like a glove)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094912) by [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings). 



When Wyatt was a kid growing up in Texas, he wanted to be a firefighter. He also wanted to be a police officer, a lion tamer, and a movie star...all at the same time. 

(It made sense when he was a kid.) 

And then he got older and firefighting and lion taming became thoughts of the distant past, drowned in a sea of military recruiters scoping out every high school in the area, plying him and every other teenager he knew with fervent promises that they could make their families proud, get an education down the road if they wanted, serve their country and better the world…

(As a teenager, saving the world sounded pretty cool. After all, who doesn’t want to be a hero?)

It took being trapped in the desert half a world away from home for him to realize he wasn’t going to save the world by being a soldier. At least not for the U.S military. 

(For someone else though, well...that might still be a possibility)

* * *

_Step 1: Find your enemy_

Wyatt sees Garcia Flynn for the first time in a clip of grainy security footage and thinks _dangerous_ even before he’s passed a file that’s more blacked out lines than actual text and told that Flynn murdered his family in cold blood. 

(That hits something deep inside him, a personal nerve that snarls in indignation that anyone would destroy the people they supposedly loved in such a way, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. He doesn’t enjoy killing people—how could he when every one of their faces flickers behind his eyelids on his worst nights, the phantom stench of blood and smoke filling his nose—but he thinks he just might not mind killing Flynn)

_Dangerous_

He pulls a gun on Flynn for the first time in 1937. With the Hindenburg in the background, flames licking high into the sky around them, Flynn towers like the devil himself come to Earth, shadows twisting across his face in the flickering light. And in front of him is Lucy, pulled tight against him as a shield. Lucy Preston, the history professor. The civilian. 

_She doesn’t deserve this._

He hesitates just a second too long.

(As Kate lays dying, Wyatt decides that not only is Garcia Flynn dangerous, but he _hates_ him)

* * *

_Step 2: Form a grudging partnership_

They chase Flynn through time and space—D.C, Las Vegas, Germany, The Alamo, D.C again—and yet somehow they never seem to get any closer to actually stopping him. It’s maddening.

Except…

(Except for all they’ve been told that Flynn is a murderer and criminal mastermind, his face when he talks about Rittenhouse is open, raw, grief slashed across its planes, and it’s almost enough to get Wyatt to feel just a little bad for him. Almost)

(But Wyatt is tied to a chair and not in the mood to sympathize with someone who has cut a path through history leaving literal fires and tons of dead bodies in his wake, regardless of whether he did the initial deed or not)

And so they go on. 

To say that Wyatt never expects to work _with_ Flynn instead of against him is an understatement, but then, there are a lot of things he’s done in his life that were necessary in the moment if not actively _wanted_. Working with Flynn in 1780 is a bit like gargling with salt water when you have strep throat—it might be marginally helpful, but it leaves you feeling a little like you want to gag and wondering if it’s really worth it in the end. 

(It’s for Jessica though. That’s what he tells himself. If Flynn really does know who killed her, if there’s the possibility that helping him for a day could finally give him the opportunity to save her, well, there’s not much Wyatt wouldn’t do for that)

(For all that he’d wanted to punch Flynn for talking about her in 1972, for comparing their situations and trying to find common ground, it’s true that the two of them are more similar than Wyatt is entirely comfortable with. It scares him a little—the thought that Flynn’s rage, his fire, his disdain for the world and everyone in it, might be somewhere inside of him as well. That if circumstances were slightly different, it’s possible that they could have gone down the same path or reversed their roles entirely. He doesn’t want to think about that)

It’s a short-lived partnership—it could hardly be anything but given that Flynn tries to kill him and Rufus in 1893—but for some strange reason, Flynn still calls afterwards. He calls and he gives him a name and for all that it could be a trick, Wyatt somehow doesn’t think it is.

He refuses to think about why Flynn holds up his end of the bargain. 

(They don’t work together again, not until 1954, and even then Wyatt would much rather shoot Flynn than help him. But Lucy steps between the two of them and there’s something—

_I prayed to God for answers and he led me here. To this._

_What if he led you to me?_

—Wyatt can’t see Lucy’s face, but he can see Flynn’s, the exhaustion, the pain, the hope, the fear, and something else too in the midst of the guilt written into every line of his body, just the faintest glimmer, but enough to make Wyatt’s stomach twist when he recognizes it—love.

 _Oh, hell._ )

1954 should be the end of it. Should be.

It isn’t.

Wyatt isn’t sure how to feel about that.

* * *

_Step 3: Re-evaluate your position_

As it turns out, much to Wyatt’s chagrin, they do actually need Flynn. Which is why two weeks after Rittenhouse steals the Mothership, the three of them break him out of prison.

Unfortunately, he’s as caustic as ever. Possibly even more. They may need him, but Flynn certainly doesn’t want them, and as for him and Lucy, well...there’s a chasm between them and the things they’ve left unsaid could fill the Mariana Trench. The last thing Wyatt wants to do is get in the middle of that and not only because of his own feelings for her. 

And yet.

(For all that Wyatt thought he knew Flynn, working with him every day makes him realize he hardly did at all)

1666, The Great Fire of London, changes things.

Flynn runs into a burning building to save a child.

It’s sudden—Wyatt turns his back to say something to Rufus about the four of them getting out of there and then Lucy is shouting, her face stricken and ash-streaked.

If the first time they’d met, Wyatt had likened Flynn to the devil, this time he’s...well, Wyatt doesn’t know what to think when he walks out with a young girl in his arms, when he crouches down to set her on the ground and brushes tears from her face while speaking in low tones.

Of course, as soon as they get back to the Lifeboat, Flynn closes off again. Or at least, that’s what Wyatt thinks until they get home.

“You could have died.”

“And that would have been so bad?”

It’s not a conversation meant to be overheard, that much Wyatt can tell from the moment Lucy and Flynn step into the backyard of the house, but he can’t leave without drawing attention to himself and it’s not something he’s inclined to interrupt either.

“Don’t do that,” Lucy replies, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t act like—”

“Like what?” Flynn interrupts. “Like I’m expendable? This may come as a surprise to you, Lucy, but there are some things worth risking your life for.”

Lucy opens her mouth to argue, then snaps it shut, understanding overshadowing any lingering frustration. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, sadder, and her crossed arms look more like a way to prevent herself from reaching out to him than anything else.

“You weren’t being a loose cannon,” she acknowledges.

“Not this time, no.”

“Garcia…”

Wyatt starts at the casual use of Flynn’s first name, his mind unconsciously flickering back to 1954, to _what if he led you to me_ , and he can’t help wondering what he would have seen in Lucy’s face in that moment.

“I can’t lose you,” she finishes, and Wyatt’s stomach sinks.

“That’s not your decision,” Flynn replies, but his voice is softer as well, tinged with something Wyatt has never heard from him.

He hates that it makes him curious. It’s easier to dislike Flynn when he causes problems, when he’s surly and barely tolerable, with words that cut like knives. Wyatt doesn’t know what to think of this.

(But then, Flynn’s been different about Lucy from the beginning. More open, more human, almost desperate in his desire to get her on his side. What that means for the rest of them, Wyatt doesn’t know)

Maybe, just maybe, hating him isn’t the way to go.

(Maybe, if he’s honest, he hasn’t actually hated Flynn in a while)

* * *

_Step 4: Fall in love_

It would be easy to say it starts with the sex, but that’s not quite true.

With Lucy, Wyatt’s in the middle before he’d even realized he’d started to fall. Kissing her in front of Bonnie and Clyde is a sledgehammer to the back of the head, a shock to the system, a moment of blazing heat followed by _oh. Oh shit._ When he sleeps with her months later, he already knows how he feels. 

With Flynn, it’s a little more complicated. 

It’s easy to dismiss that first night with the three of them as a one-time thing. Wyatt’s confident enough in his sexuality that he’s not bothered in the least by anything that happened between him and Flynn, but he’s not exactly expecting it to happen again.

Except...it does. Once turns to twice turns to three times turns to a regular thing and while it would be easy to pretend that it’s all about Lucy, Wyatt can’t deny that he _likes_ Flynn. They’re competitive about Lucy and they snipe and snark and bicker like children, but there’s something deeply satisfying about having a pass to lean over and shut the other man up with his mouth when it gets to be too much. There’s something mesmerizing about the power in him and the confidence that falters every so often. And he’s good in bed. That’s certainly a plus.

But it’s just sex. That’s all. The two of them love Lucy and want to give her what she wants and there isn’t anything more to it.

Until there is. 

(Wyatt wakes up in the middle of the night with Lucy wrapped around him and the other side of the bed cold and finds Flynn in the kitchen with his head between his knees struggling to breathe as reality wars with the unspoken terrors in his head. He talks him down, hand pressed between his shoulder blades like an anchor until Flynn’s breathing evens out and he settles. When Flynn kisses him after, cheeks damp and eyes red, it’s a fleeting thing but soft as a feather.

It freezes Wyatt’s feet to the floor for minutes after Flynn leaves the room, his mind dazed and pulse racing.

 _Oh. Oh shit_ )

* * *

_Step 5: Kick ass_

If Rufus has any idea what exactly happened to make them all start gelling as a real team, he doesn’t let on, but the shift in dynamics is obvious. What’s more, they start winning.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to fight Rittenhouse when they aren’t fighting each other.

(Lucy laughs at Wyatt when he casually mentions this. Flynn just smirks)

It takes a year and seven months to defeat Rittenhouse, to make sure there aren’t enough members left to restart the process in the future. It’s difficult, it’s exhausting, and all of them nearly die more than once.

But it’s worth it.

They save history. They save the world.

(As it turns out, having people you love is more important than being a hero)

* * *

_Bonus Step: Live Happily Ever After_

**Author's Note:**

> Is it petty to create additional content for a ship just because people were bashing it? Maybe a little. Do I care? Absolutely not.
> 
> For the record, the tags are very clear. If you can't police your own fandom content, I don't know what to tell you.


End file.
